"So, sorry, I know this sounds crazy," he starts speaking very quickly, "but the fact that that happened is not actually evidence we're notinasimulation."

(There are no upticks of backlash while he's speaking but when he looks up for Haru's reaction there's one that lasts until, well, Haru reacts.)

"I have some slightly dubious relevance to an awakening and none at all to a regular psychotic break so I am going to give logicking you out of this a fair shake and if that does not work I am going to have to call your mom and get her directives on next steps, so, uh, maybe put some thought into the logicking, okay?"

(Actually it also still continues to go up through much of that!)  "Okay!  Um, how??"

"I don't know, I have never tried this before! So like - do you think espers are real, a thing that occurs in base level reality."

"Assuming anything I remember is real, yeah.  And it would be weird if they had me my whole life, although, like, I realize I'm positing that a weird thing happened but - but - if my whole life has been in here then that's kind of the same as not being in a simulation, I think."

"So given that espers are real, which is likelier: that you are having some lingering philosophical disquiet after an awakening with delusional components, or that something that you would presumably have previously identified as not real - fully featured immersive simulation of the observable world that persists twenty-four-seven - descended upon you, at no apparent provocation, the nature of which you happen to have formed the opinion that you have special insight into? Either timed for your awakening that made you unnaturally terrified or coincidentally simulating both an awakening and a subsequent power that must be responding to your mental state? And which of these things do you think it makes sense for me to believe from my vantage point?"

"Um, I want to say the philosophical disquiet is likelier but I think what I mean is that I really really don't want to go to a psych hospital -"

"I am not going to check you in to a psych hospital on the sole basis of this conversation, all I'd do would be to ask your mother, but I would be very much overextending myself if I tried to keep doing this forever."

Okay.  Okay.  He breathes (to no backlash uptick).

"I just think it's like - really insanely super mega unlikely that we would have touched hands at Tim's, and been this compatible, when - it's not like I'm touching every customer, you know?  I generally don't touch people, let alone strangers.  ...Strangers I'm not trying to have sex with.  In that moment.  Aiming for it.  Sorry, I'm not very coherent, I've - you already know that I've been sleeping really badly."

"I noticed, yeah. Yes, it's very unlikely, but it's more like winning the lottery than... like... what's properly impossible, time travel? Than like time travel. You're not gonna win the lottery, you're not gonna if you play it every day for your whole life, but it is a winnable thing, someone wins it, winning it consists of picking numbers each of which is available to you to select. It is a wacky coincidence, not a complete upheaval on par with the one in 1971, that one day a guy mid-awakening brushed hands with a regular customer who is also an esper. Those are all unusual but not impossible. You are proposing in place of that lottery-level irregularity a new 1971-grade event, and you're proposing that it - what's your current model, happened to me when I awakened and you got assumed into a simulation that I was already in for five years but I never noticed, whereas by contrast you have simulation-empathy that kicked in before you got psychic and/or sensor powers?"

"Lots of things could be happening.  According to me."  He makes a short noise of despair and is immediately embarrassed about it.

"In any of the scenarios that could be happening according to you... how did it happen that you noticed anything happening at all?"

"I should go through and make a list of everything weird I noticed happening to me."

"...sure, that might be productive."

"It would also mean a lot to me if you kind of - went over your life history looking for more lottery wins."

"...I'm an esper? I have good powers? Cricket likes me alone out of basically everyone on the planet? I don't think anything else markedly unusual has happened to me, do you want... biographical support of that assertion, or something...?"

"Is that counting bad stuff?"

"It's not unusual to have divorced parents or to hate one's backlash - there are worse ones, I don't have the worst possible backlash, I just hate it - I guess in addition to hating it on its merits I do not really love the arrangement I wound up with when I found June but, like, I could have made different choices about attending mixers, I just don't love those either. I had dyspraxia growing up but awakening fixed it."

"I think we should find out whether I have a range limit.  And then I should make a list."

"...okay, I can get some distance from the house while we've got a phone call going?"

"Is there a chance it might be short enough to fit in the house?"

"It's not impossible but I'd expect it's not very likely since it's not touch range."

"Ughhhh.  ...I mean, I guess it could be good, once we know what it does..."